PARIS (AP) — For weeks, Marine Le Pen has thrown all her energy into fighting what she calls unfair accusations that her party embezzled European Parliament funds. France’s leading far-right figure is now facing a crucial moment in a high-profile trial where her eligibility to run for president in 2027 is at stake.
Le Pen is anticipating a guilty verdict, as prosecutors wrap up their case Wednesday and lay out their proposed sentence. The trial is scheduled to finish Nov. 27, with a verdict at a later date.
The National Rally and 25 of its officials, including Le Pen, are accused of having used money intended for EU parliamentary aides instead to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. The National Rally was called the National Front at the time.
As she was heading to the Paris courtroom last week, Le Pen wished Donald Trump “every success” in a message on X. The French far-right leader, who has vowed to run for president for the fourth time in 2027, may have in mind that Trump’s felony conviction earlier this year didn’t divert his path away from the White House.
From the outset of the long and complex trial, Le Pen has been a forceful presence, sitting in the front row, staying for long hours into the night and expressing her irritation at allegations she says are wrong.
A lawyer by training, she follows the proceedings with extreme attention, sometimes puffing her cheeks, making her disagreement known with forceful nods of the head and striding over to consult with her lawyers, her heels loudly clicking on the courtroom’s hard wooden floors.
If found guilty, Le Pen and her co-defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 1 million euros ($1.1 million) each. But in recent days, Le Pen's biggest concern focused on the court's ability to impose a period of ineligibility to run for office. A similar case involving a French centrist party ended up with fines and suspended prison sentences earlier this year.
She could be seen discussing with her lawyers the legal complexities of such a scenario that could hamper, or even destroy, her goal to mount another presidential bid. Le Pen was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party's electoral support has grown in recent years.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Le Pen appeared to prepare the ground for a possible conviction with comments about a guilty verdict she described as foreseeable – yet she said there was no question of renouncing or lowering her political ambitions.
“I feel we didn’t succeed in convincing you,” Le Pen told the panel of three judges last week, as she detailed her arguments in a one-hour-and-a-half speech punctuated with political remarks seemingly meant to be heard by the many journalists in the courtroom.
Le Pen denied accusations she had been at the head of “a system” meant to siphon off EU parliament money to the benefit of her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021.
She instead argued the missions of the aides were to be adapted to the MEPs’ various activities, including some highly political missions related to the party.
Parliamentary aide “is a status,” she said. “It says nothing about the job, nothing about the work required, from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphic designer, from the bodyguard to the MEP's office employee.”
Le Pen’s co-defendants — most of whom owe her their political or professional career — testified under her close watch.
Some of the aides provided embarrassed and confused explanations, faced with the lack of evidence their work was in relation with the EU parliament.
Often, they could hear her bringing precisions or rectifications even when it wasn’t her turn to address the court. Sometimes, she would punctuate a point they made with a loud “voilà” (“that’s it”).
Le Pen insisted the party “never had the slightest remonstrance from the Parliament" until a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European body, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of EU funds by members of the National Front.
“Let’s go back in time. The rules either didn’t exist or were much more flexible,” she said.
Le Pen feared the court would draw wrong conclusions from the party’s ordinary practices she said were legitimate.
“It’s unfair,” she repeated. “When one is convinced that tomato means cocaine, the whole grocery list becomes suspicious!"
The president of the court, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said no matter what political issues may be at stake, the court was to stick to a legal reasoning.
“In the end, the only question that matters ... is to determine, based on the body of evidence, whether parliamentary aides worked for the MEP they were attached to or for the National Rally,” de Perthuis said.
Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer for the European Parliament, said the cost of the suspected embezzlement is estimated to 4,5 million euros. “In the past few weeks, it has appeared very clearly that the fraud is, I think, largely established,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Maisonneuve said some of the defendants seemed to have instructions “to give the same collective answers, as good soldiers, for the party and to save the boss.”
In her last hearing before prosecutors speak Wednesday, Le Pen called on the judges to see “evidence of (her) innocence.”
“The court can write that we’re messy, sometimes disorganized... It’s not a crime,” she said.
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AP journalists John Leicester, Marine Lesprit and Alexander Turnbull contributed to this report.
http://accesswdun.com/article/2024/11/1272537